Letting
go of our treasured notions.
We
all have treasured notions about life that are comforting to us, they help us
deal with the way life is. I’ve read accounts of scientists having to give up
some of their treasured notions; like that time and chance explain everything
in the universe. Some are having to give up their treasured notion that a
godless evolutionary process can explain how life is the way it is. Other
people struggle to give up the treasured notion that if someone is a good person,
that’s good enough for them to get into heaven. I looked up the phrase
“treasured notion” on google and got nearly 450,000 hits. Lots of people are
writing on the internet of giving up treasured notions. Of course, it’s usually
someone else who is having to give up a treasured notion, not the writer, not
me, not us. There were treasured notions about science, about economics, about
history, about medicine and antidotes, you name it, someone has a treasured
notion about it.
We
too have treasured notions about the way life should be…about the way life was
the way we remember it. We have treasured notions that if we work hard enough,
and save our money, use it wisely, then we’ll be able to afford a house at some
point, we’ll be able to have everything we think we deserve. We have the
treasured notion that good people don’t suffer, the treasured notion of a
family that functions perfectly, of relationships with great communication that
never fail, that a college education will enable us to do anything we want to
with our lives…the treasured notion that we have life figured out and
everything is gravy from here on out. People have always harbored treasured
notions of “the way its supposed to be”, today’s passage is Jesus disabusing
some folks of their treasured notion about the Sabbath…Mark 2:23ff
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples
walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look,
why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
25 He
answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were
hungry and in need? 26 In
the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the
consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave
some to his companions.”
27 Then
he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of
the Sabbath.”
3 Another time he went into the
synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a
reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him
on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said
to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
4 Then
Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to
save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply
distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began
to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.[1]
Let’s pray.
The Jewish people had, in Abram,(later renamed Abraham)
way back in Genesis chapter 15, made a pact with God. A better, more accurate
word is that Abram made a covenant with God. If the people followed God’s rules
for living, then He would be their God, and they would be His people. Notice
the “if, then” parts of the covenant. If this happens, then this will take place.
The people of God were to live a certain way, they were to put God first,
worship Him alone, many things. The most obvious and basic were given, much
later in the history of the Jews, to Moses on top of another mountain, Mt
Sinai. We call these the 10 commandments. They are as follows; (1) You shall
have no other gods before me (2) thou shall not make any graven image (3) You
shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (4) Remember the Sabbath
and keep it holy (5) honor your father and mother (6) You shall not kill (7)
you shall not commit adultery (8) You shall not steal (9) You shall not bear
false witness; ie lie (10) you shall not covet.
These were not kept. The history of the Jewish people
details their on again, off again relationship with God. The people would
stray, God would send a prophet to try and bring them back, and back they would
come for a bit. But soon the people were off again, worshipping and sacrificing
at the altars of local fertility gods; Baal, and using the Ashara pole,
whatever that is. Eventually the people were so bad, sacrificing live babies to
iron idols, that God finally invoked the punishment phase of the covenant He
made with Abraham. You see, the covenant had its blessings and its punishments.
If the Israelites were to follow God, they would be blessed. But if they walked
away from God, there were consequences. After a while, the Israelites walked
away. They got bored, other gods seemed more exciting and accessible, they
decided to live their own way, in their own wisdom. Had we been there, we
probably would have too. There was nothing especially evil about the
Israelites. They were prone to sin, prone to wander away from God just like we
are.
So God invoked the punishment. The people of Israel lost
their precious land, the land that defined them. They were conquered in battle,
Jerusalem, the city of God was sacked, and most of the people were taken away
in captivity in Babylon. The same God that had brought them safely out of
Egypt, through the desert and into the promised land revoked their possession
of the promised land. After a period of time, the Israelites were allowed back
into the land, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, to rebuild the Temple in
Jerusalem so that they could really worship God. The exile took place about 600
years before Christ, the return was 80-100 years later, so approximately 500
years prior to Christ’s birth. In all those 500 years the Jewish religious
leadership was justifiably concerned that the people of Israel not get taken
again into captivity. I’m glossing over a lot of history, including Rome’s
capture of Israel, Israel’s rebellion under the Macabee Family, and the
subsequent recapture by Rome. What I’m getting at is that over time the
Pharisees became very, very concerned with keeping the Law, everything that God
had given to Moses so that there wouldn’t be another time of exile.
The Jewish leadership tried to define everything to the
T. What does it mean to honor your father and mother? What things are
permissible? What things not? Obviously “do not murder” is a clear directive.
But what does it mean to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”? The Jews set
up an elaborate set of guidelines, actually rules, that the people were to
follow to know that they weren’t breaking the commandment. That was an
elaborate background for today’s passage. Today we look at 2 incidents Mark has
grouped together, each one about an incident where Jesus quarrels with the
Pharisees over what "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” might be.
These were treasured notions the Pharisees had, but they were wrong.
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples
walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look,
why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
25 He
answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were
hungry and in need? 26 In
the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the
consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave
some to his companions.”
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So
the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
One of the things people were to abstain from on the Sabbath was any kind of work. Of course, this is easier to keep if one is wealthy. Poor people have to take the goats and sheep out to pasture each day, whether it is the Sabbath or not. The goats aren’t conveniently not hungry one day a week. People of the land also have to milk the cows no matter what. The cows don’t stop needing to be milked just because it is the Sabbath. Someone in charge of cows or sheep couldn’t follow the Sabbath laws perfectly. They would have had to work. There was no option. In effect, the Pharisees were setting up a tiered situation of righteousness; the wealthy could afford to be righteous, and the rest of society could not. In effect, it set up both a whole false sense of guilt and a false sense of righteousness. Someone wasn’t righteous because they didn’t take the goats out or not on the Sabbath. And someone shouldn’t have felt guilty either.
Because the bottom line, as Jesus points out, is that
God created the Sabbath for His people, not as an extra rule to feel guilty
about breaking. The Sabbath is about rest; it is about a time to refocus on
God, to spend some time before Him. Instead of working every day for the rest
of their lives, God created some time and space for worship, for taking their
minds off the ordinary and putting some time in with God. As far as we know,
the Israelites are the only culture of the time, the only people who had
something like this; built in time off. It was not a rule to break, but a gift
God gave His people. To prove this larger point, Jesus looks to an event of the
past the Pharisees would have known of. When David was being chased by Saul
through the desert, at one point he and his buddies ate the consecrated bread
that only the priests were allowed to eat. And David, of course, was the best,
most righteous King Israel ever had. What Jesus is saying with this reference
is that the rules are for people, not to oppress them. If the bread is the only
thing available to eat, then by golly eat it. If the Sabbath is the day on
which we are hungry, isn’t it okay to do a little “work” in order to feed
ourselves. David did it, why shouldn’t we? Especially because David understood
the rules God gives us are not to irritate us, or oppress us, but are given
because we need those things. Does someone hungry think about God? No, they
think of food. Maybe a little food in the stomach will help them think better,
worship God better.
Mark combines this event with another concerning the
Sabbath, and the Jewish leader’s distortion of the gift of the Sabbath God gave
them.
Another time he went into the synagogue, and a
man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so
they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the
shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
4 Then
Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to
save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply
distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began
to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
You’ll
notice here how Mark has collapsed time; he combines the previous event of
picking grain on a Saturday with this later event. You can see Mark has
combined these events because of the topic of Sabbath keeping, rather than
making sure everything is chronological. It’s hard to believe that healing was
so common that it would be on the official list of work prohibited by the
Pharisees. But clearly it was. You can see by this time the Pharisees were
watching Him to see what He will do; they are setting up a case against Him
already. It’s the beginning of the third chapter in Mark and already the
Pharisees are sufficiently threatened to begin plotting on how they might kill
Jesus. Did they kill other people for violating their Sabbath laws? I doubt it.
Like I said before, there were many people who broke Sabbath rules on a regular
basis. There is something deeper here. Jesus was pointing out to all the people
that the religion of the Pharisees was just that; a religion. There was nothing
of God in the following of strict rules. That was a human invention-all God
said was to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. It doesn’t say you can’t
pick grain, or heal someone who needs healing. Jesus is fundamentally redoing
the Jewish religion. He was redefining it in Himself-it is through Him that
people will be made right before God, not because of the rules they follow.
You
might have noticed this is also written in chiasm form. It begins with the
Pharisees seeing what He will do, plotting against Him. Then Jesus talks to the
man with the withered hand. The middle is Jesus asking His rhetorical question
about doing good on the Sabbath. Then Jesus talks to the man again, and the
Pharisees begin to plot. It is the center that the Jewish readers would have
known was the most important part. Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?
Common sense would say yes. Is it lawful to do harm? Leaving the man’s hand
unhealed would have been doing harm-and that’s what the Pharisees wanted.
Potentially they could have accused Jesus either way; either of healing the man
on the Sabbath or of ignoring the man. Either they could point this event out
to the common people, and say, look here, Jesus had an opportunity to heal this
man and He didn’t. Or they have the opportunity to run to Jerusalem and say
this new preacher is ignoring the rules of the Sabbath. Either way, they have
something against Jesus. And God is ever for people, and against empty forms of
religiosity, and heals the man.
You
see, the Pharisees had this treasured notion that their rules were leading
people into right relationship with God. They had rules for the Sabbath, rules
for how to financially deal with your parents, rules for sacrifices, rules for
who to touch and who not to, rules for how to do business, rules for how to
keep your word and when its okay not to. Treasured notions that their rules
were leading the people into righteousness before God, treasured notions that
they were saving the Israelites from another exile. In reality, they were
putting up barriers to God. And as I thought about it, they were putting up
barriers for everyone.
Those
following the rules had this false conception, a treasured notion, that because
they were following the rules, God was pleased with them and all they needed to
be right before God was these debatable actions. Those who could follow all the
rules gained the adulation of the community and ultimately separated themselves
from God because they did not think they needed a clean heart, they did not
believe that they had sinned and needed God’s forgiveness. King David understood
this need; when confronted with His sin, David knew he needed to repent. But
people following all the rules think they have no need to repent, that they are
living the way God has commanded and there is no need for forgiveness, no need
to submit to God, no need for God. They’ve followed the rules. The real problem
is that this is still going on. There are people who profess to know God, but
know only rules. They believe Heaven everlasting is the result of following
rules, rather than knowing God through Christ. It is our privilege to free
people from the rules, and offering them the freedom of God through Jesus
Christ; through His death on the cross and our acceptance of that sacrifice as
having been for us,; for you, for me, for them.
And
of course, those not following the rules have the tendency to give up. They
cannot be perfect, they know the penalty is Hell but there seems to be no human
way to avoid eternal separation from God. I can’t imagine that sort of pain.
Because I have, and I hope you have, thrown myself at God’s feet and I depend
on His grace to save me, not any of the things I do in this life. We are freed
by Christ to live for Him, not in fear of God. We are freed to honor God by our
life, not following a lot of rules and treasured notions. Don’t follow rules;
follow Christ. Rules are good up to a point, but we need to get beyond the
rules to God.
So
the big question is what are the treasured notions we have to give up? Do we
have to give up the notion that we will grow as Christians without doing the
hard work of being daily in the Word of God? DO we think we’ll become better at
praying as we grow older without practicing now? DO we think that this church
will grow without our participation? Do we have to give up the notion that all
God wants from us is an hour each Sunday morning? What are the treasured
notions each of us has to give up in order to follow God?
Let’s
pray.